Buchanan Lodge

The Salvation Army Buchanan Lodge is a friendly, supportive, residential complex-care home in which frail elderly and dementia residents would be accommodated in several self-contained households.

Project Type

Seniors Housing,
Healthcare

Location

409 Blair Ave., New Westminster, BC

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They desired an architecture which would recapture the qualities and spirit of the original Buchanan House, built originally around the turn of the century.

“The residents, families and caregivers truly feel you have designed us a home, I commend you for the design, and the attractiveness of the whole project, it is truly a Home with a Plus. It is easy to understand why Buchanan Lodge has been called the jewel of the Salvation Army with such beautiful homelike surroundings that are second to none.”

In 1946, Mr. Bentley Buchanan bequeathed his home to the Salvation Army, to be used as a home for the elderly. Over the next fifty years, the historic Buchanan House, built at the turn of the last century, underwent several additions transforming the small heritage house, into a large nondescript care facility.

When the client embarked on the design for new 110-bed complex care to replace the existing facility, they wanted a non-institutional residential environment accommodating the frail elderly in small households, as well, the architecture was to capture the qualities and spirit of the original Buchanan House that once stood so proudly, on the site.

There are two households on each floor: each house has its own dining, living, activity areas, bathing room and care centre. Both the interior and exterior of the project makes a stylistic reference and is evocative of the original Buchanan House. The materials are simple and in keeping with local building vernacular: horizontal clapboard siding, trim boards around openings, deep porches supported by stout columns and steeply pitched roof forms with broad, flat gable ends.